April was a busy month. I spent time at home with my family, in Chicago with friends, made it to the Final Four and Championship game, did 9 days in Panama, got my SCUBA diving certification, officiated a wedding, and flew to Vancouver, my home for the next four months.

It’s been a necessarily relaxing weekend. But now I get to write this sitting outside of my new apartment in the PacNW, looking at the mountains, and listening to Vin Scully talk through a baseball game. It seems like a mundane Saturday, but for me it’s novel.

Today is the 2nd day of May, as well, which means that April is over and so are my challenges, and there’s a new set to start on!

So, how’d I do in April? Pretty well, actually. I changed my approach in two (2) ways: no more daily challenges, but weekly instead, and combining challenges so that they worked with each other, instead of against.

Results are here:

Limited Technology Hours [Lifestyle Goal]

Goal: No Personal Technology After 10pm on Weekdays

Result: 19/22 nights.

I broke this three nights, almost all by necessity. I did, however, offer a solution to accomplish the deeper goal I set out: no technology within 90 minutes of going to sleep. This, again, was what the goal was aimed toward — and in that I was successful. This taught me a lesson, not in discipline, but in discovery. It’s not necessarily something that will automatically carry into a success framework, but it might in the planning stages of taking on any kind of challenge.

Poems [Writing Goal]

I put up a page to host all the poems. They are in no particular order — other than the one I chose to write them in.

This is the first time I’ve ever put poetry out (“published”). The challenge was really getting over by nerves in doing so (vulnerability is probably a better word for it), and then settling with what is posted without the enormous weight of wanting to edit every word hanging around. But it’s done.

Most of these are poems on several edit(ion)s now. So it wasn’t writing, just again, coming to terms with posting something I do as a hobby and do not do for others very well (or often).

Muscle Health [Health Goal]

Goal: 90 minutes of muscle rolling weekly.

Result: 4/4. 100%.

This was probably my most enjoyable goal of the year so far — one because it feels oh-so-good to get to roll out your muscles for a while (after you get past the hurt, of course). But also because I feel as I made my biggest jump with this in terms of a larger framework.

Two big discoveries from here that I mentioned above: (1) it was helpful to establish this as a weekly goal instead of a daily one. What this allowed me to do was borrow time against myself on days when I wasn’t able to do my rolling. This helped me achieve success in a month where my schedule, location, and workout schedules were entirely varied. I was in 3 different countries, flying all around, driving until late into the night, and there just weren’t days I could accomplish this. Past months saw me fail in several goals precisely because they were daily. With this, it meant that there were some nights I rolled for 30-40 minutes, but again, it was when I had the time to do so (or made the time) and didn’t try to beat the impossible. Then (2) was that this goal aligned very closely with the lifestyle goal. Since I wasn’t allowed on any technology, it freed up my time to do something like this; which is non-technical. It was a good realization — have goals that promote each other instead of inhibit.

FULL ANALYSIS

It was a great month — lots of memories and some good success with my challenges. May will be much more sedentary, but it was great to see success on-the-move. I suppose,in some ways, I’ve mastered parts of that lifestyle. Now we’ll see how the staying-in-one-place goes.

There isn’t much more analysis I have than the large paragraph above. The planning stage for May has been a bit more in-depth, to help accomplish the idea of having goals that complement one another.

Looking forward to my month in Vancouver — exploring some new terrain. Looking forward to a new set of goals. I’ll do this month and June and then take a break month in July for a full analysis and breakdown of how things have gone so far. Perhaps I’ll come out of July with a v1 of a framework to use. We’ll see!